


Contrasts

by cr0wgrrl



Series: Outtakes & Extras for ZoyciteM's "Sammy's Time at Stanford" [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Marc, BDSM, Blackmail, Emotional Manipulation, Exhibitionism, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt Marc, M/M, Multi, Original Character(s), POV Original Character, Pansexual Character, Pansexual Lawton, Past Child Abuse, S&M, Sex Club, Whipping, bastinado
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 09:24:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7971661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cr0wgrrl/pseuds/cr0wgrrl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marc wakes the way he's woken up for almost a year: Lawton's soft hands, petting his hair. Lawton's soft voice, telling him he's safe. Lawton's soft kiss to his forehead, telling him he's okay. The difference is, now it's not a lie.</p>
<p>[Read this after Chapter 24 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583">Sammy's Time at Stanford</a>.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contrasts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ZoyciteM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoyciteM/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Sammy's Time at Stanford](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583) by [ZoyciteM](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoyciteM/pseuds/ZoyciteM). 



> For fans of Sammy's Time at Stanford, a brief background study on the two little subs we met at a certain BDSM club in Chicago...
> 
> Part of the inspiration behind this fic was giving ZoyciteM the inspiration to finish [Chapter 35: Praise](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583/chapters/18351571) of Sammy's Time at Stanford, wherein Marc and Lawton return!

~ Marc ~

Marc wakes the way he's woken up for almost a year: Lawton's soft hands, petting his hair. Lawton's soft voice, telling him he's safe. Lawton's soft kiss to his forehead, telling him he's okay.

The difference is, now it's not a lie.

It's one of the bad nightmares this time, the one where he's chained up at the club and the Marquis is whipping him and no one in the room is stopping him. And he's crying out for his mom and for help and for mercy, knowing that all three are beyond his reach, as one by one the audience turns into all the kids and teachers he knew that last year. He can hear the murmur of their conversations over the dripping of his blood, and then everything quiets at the slithery clap of the whip hitting the ground. There's the unmistakable sound of a zipper lowering as the Marquis removes his hood, and then the clear, unmuffled voice of his stepfather tells him to _stop whining_ and _take it like a man_. And the room breaks into applause.

~*~

Marc runs away from home at 15, the night his stepfather backhands him into the dining room table so hard he cracks a rib. He hits his head on the way down and wakes up three minutes later, his father already off to the bar. The blow knocks the sense into him, he likes to say; he packs up his laptop and his phone and the sturdiest clothes he can find, plus a box of granola bars and fifty dollars of the money his stepfather keeps tucked away in an envelope at the back of his nightstand.

One year later, Marc's hawked or pawned almost everything except the clothes on his back, and is seriously considering taking Sunny Joey's offer of joining his stable. (He's traded blowjobs for food now and again, but joining a stable is a career choice. A _commitment._ ) And then Miss Eris comes along.

Marc signs Miss Eris's contract because he is young, and stupid, and desperate. He thinks that BDSM means being able to take a beating, and if there is one skill he's developed over the years, it's that one. It's going to be his choice this time, and that's going to make it all okay.

He doesn't know about the sex part. And by the time he finds out about it, it's too late.

 

~ Lawton ~

Lawton holds Marc until he falls back into a more restful sleep. He pets his hair, and brushes soft kisses across his eyes and cheeks, keeping the touches gentle and kind and above the waist. (Not that he would ever do anything to Marc that he doesn't want, but sometimes even accidental touches are enough to trigger his friend's worse memories.) He's glad that Marc does not mind sharing a bed with him – he likes to think his presence makes the nightmares easier to handle.

Not that Lawton doesn't have his share of nightmares, too. He feels a little bad even calling them that, though – they aren't _bad_ , the way Marc's are. Not really. Usually, it's just him, back at the club, and Miss Eris is there, and his fellow subs. But no matter what he does, no one talks to him, or touches him; no one even punishes him. It's like he doesn't even exist. And just when he thinks he's going to die of loneliness, Miss Eris looks right through him and asks, "Has anyone seen _pretty_ lately?" And even though he should be profoundly hurt that he's right there in front of her and she can't see him, all he can think about in the dream is that at least on some level, someone cares enough to notice that he's missing.

It doesn't take a degree in psychology to know what those dreams are about.

~ * ~

All Lawton has ever wanted was to be _wanted_. He doesn't know why his mother gave him up for adoption; as a child, he likes to imagine something dramatic, like maybe she had been dying of an incredibly swiftly progressing cancer, and her last act before dying was to struggle up to St. Ignatius's doors with him in her arms. She would have kissed his forehead, and told him to be good for the nice people, and reminded him that she loved him very, very much and always would, before stealing away into the darkness.

Now, though, he understands much better that she probably just didn't want him.

No one ever wants Lawton, and he doesn't know why. Not his mother. Not any of the people who come by the Catholic-run group home for the first eight years of his life and pick every kid but him, or the four different foster homes who grudgingly take him in once he gets too old for the home. None of them keep him - too needy, too standoffish, too pretty not to be queer, too _Lawton_.

The last one is the worst. Two months after Lawton gets there, his foster father invites him to come with him on his business trip to Chicago. When they arrive, he takes him out to dinner at a Tad's Steak House, then hands him two twenties and tells him good luck. He says he's sorry, but with three kids of his own, his family really needs the extra income from the state's monthly check for Lawton's expenses, but he doesn't have the room for a fourth kid. Besides, he says, he's doing him a favor, really – all foster kids are just marking time until they get out of the system, anyway. This way, Lawton gets two whole years' head start on that.

Lawton is so locked up in panic that he doesn't know what to say. So he just stands there, clutching his suitcase in shock as the man pats him on the head and walks out of his life.

Miss Eris finds him just two days later, and for the first time in his life, Lawton feels wanted. He has his own bedroom, and responsibilities, and someone who cares about him. In her own way, anyway.

 

~ Marc ~

Sometimes Marc feels bad for lying to Lawton, or if not _exactly_ lying, then not _exactly_ telling the entire truth. It's not like Lawton doesn't know most of the story, though. He knows that Marc was homeless like him, and about Marc's stepfather. He knows that Marc has never really liked any of what they do – not the sex, not the bondage, not any of the stuff that Lawton craves.

But Lawton doesn't know that Miss Eris also knows that.

He doesn't know what she whispers into Marc's ear one night as blood oozes from the cane marks she's left across his thighs, that _that_ is why she picked him: for the sheer joy of being able to do whatever she wants to someone who doesn't want it. Her study in contrasts, she calls them. Lawton – _pretty_ – who withstands whatever is done to him because he craves for the attention to continue. And Marc – _pet_ – who withstands whatever is done to him because he is praying for the time when it will end.

And he doesn't know about the three times Marc decides his contract can go fuck itself and tries to leave, or what she does to him afterwards.

 

~ Lawton ~

Miss Eris teaches Lawton so much. He doesn't know anything about what she expects from him, but she arranges for the other subs to teach him. He tries to be as quick a study as he can, and happily submits to anything that anyone asks of him (which makes him very popular with the club's other subs, who make frequent use of his mouth and ass during the club's off-hours). It doesn't hurt that he loves all of it; the pain, the pleasure, the sheer connection he feels to every person he is asked to serve, and the joy he takes at following their every command to the best of his ability.

It's just a shame he isn't _better_ at it.

He tries, he really does. But as Miss Eris consoles him one night after he breaks down under her biting correction of him, it really isn't his fault that he isn't good enough. Some people are made perfect, like Marc, who has never required study or practice – masters take one look at him and beg her for permission to play with him. Lawton, on the other hand, isn't a natural; nothing he ever does is good enough. His form is poor, his ability to withstand pain is subpar, and despite his quickly growing experience, his skill with oral and anal sex remains amateurish at best. But everyone can see how hard he tries, so they make allowances for his ineptitude in hopes that he will improve.

Miss Eris names him _pretty_ because, as she often says, it's a good thing he is, since it's the only thing he has going for him.

 

~ Marc ~

The first time Marc tries to leave, Miss Eris tells him he can't, it's not in his contract.

He tries anyway.

Fifteen minutes later, her bouncers march him firmly back into her office, where she smiles at him as she wraps a red band around his wrist. Red means a sub who is available for public use at the club, rough trade preferred, lube and prep optional; only the hardcore subs wear them, and it is always a party when one appears. Then she watches as he is carried, ring-gagged and blindfolded and struggling, over to one of the bondage slings, where her bouncers lock him in. When she unlocks him three hours later, Marc collapses on the ground, shaking legs unable to hold his weight, and begs for her forgiveness with a whispery rasp.

A month later, after an exceptionally bad session on the cross, Marc tries again. This time, he waits until an hour before the club opens, when Miss Eris and her staff will be busy getting everything ready for the evening. Since his clothes are now in a padlocked locker "for safekeeping," he slips out the back door wearing one of the club's "Roman fantasy" togas... only to find her bouncers waiting for him. This time, she locks him in the sling for six hours, and when his shift is over, gives him 25 stripes with the cane. Between the rough endless parade of face-fucking and the screaming afterwards, his throat is too sore to talk above a whisper, and it takes three days before he can sit down comfortably.

This is when Marc decides he has nothing else to lose by trying, believing she can't do anything worse than she already has.

He's wrong.

When her bouncers catch him - which of course they do - the third time finds him again back in the sling, which is okay; by necessity, he's learned how to disassociate himself from what happens to his body. But at the end of the night, after the club is closed, she straps him down to a table, legs raised and chained, and introduces him to a new form of punishment called bastinado. He can't walk for weeks, crawling even from his bed to the bathroom and taking his meals from dog bowls on the floor.

And when the doctor pronounces his feet fully healed, she does it again.

Afterwards, she sends the new boy, Lawton, to comfort him. Beautiful, kind, smart, naïve Lawton, who is so full of love and desperate for someone to give it to. And Marc is hurt and selfish enough to take the comfort.

Miss Eris lets their friendship blossom, even encourages it. Which seems strange… until the night when it all becomes too much once again and Marc thinks once again of running, and she whispers in her ear that if he runs, Lawton will take his place. He thinks of Lawton slung up and fucked raw and bleeding by an endless parade of strangers. Of Lawton, red welts scabbing his thighs like tiger stripes. Of Lawton, his feet purple and bruised, crawling on the floor and eating from a dog bowl.

Marc stays.

 

~ Lawton ~

Sometimes being _pretty_ is a bitter pill for Lawton to swallow. He tries not to be jealous of Marc, who is called to play at least four nights a week, while Miss Eris keeps Lawton primarily bound, leashed and on display "so he won't embarrass the club." He watches the subs around him, the way their owners shower them with affection, and tries to memorize how they act. It's easy to see that their masters and mistresses love them; if Lawton's own is less than loving, the fault must lie with him. So he listens as Miss Eris provides a constant tight-lipped stream of his many failings, accompanied by seemingly endless corrections and criticism, and tells himself it's proof that she cares, and tries to improve.

If he's good enough, she'll love him. He just has to be better.

And when the club is closed, or on the nights when neither is called to serve, he has Marc. Marc, whose bed he crawls into on Miss Eris's orders after a particularly intense scene that leaves the other boy shaking and crying. He rubs the ointment she gives him into each of his welts and stripes, and then holds him until he falls asleep.

More often than not after that, the two sleep together, arms and legs wrapped around each other as they cling to the comfort of sheer physical connection. They never do more than sleep, though – Lawton offers to pleasure Marc that first night, knowing that Master Dashwood never lets Marc come during his sessions, and Marc awkwardly explains that he doesn't want that, and doesn't really actually like sex all that much, period. But he loves cuddling, and kissing, and Lawton is more than happy to do that for hours whenever they are allowed.

He's not stupid. He knows there's more going on with Marc than Marc tells him. He knows Miss Eris took them both in when they were too young to be legal, and that despite their contracts, they are both probably being exploited. But Lawton won't leave without Marc, and Marc doesn't want to leave. It's better here than on the streets, especially since neither of them have any clothes or money, so where could they go anyway? They'd need something out of a fairytale to escape – a fairy godmother, or a dashing prince or two, or a daring hero to fight for them.

But this is the real world, where life isn't fair, and princes and heroes don't exist, and the best that forgotten and unwanted boys like Marc and Lawton can hope for is a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and a soft bed to curl up on together.

Marc stays, so Lawton stays.

~*~

Until, one night, [they don't](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5661583/chapters/14311207). And everything changes.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you missed them, ZoyciteM published TWO new timestamps of sexytimes between our favorite boys this week! Check out [Peppermint](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7951312) and [Handle With Care](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7955383). Do it now!


End file.
